Multi-rotor UAV (and multirotor copters in general) configurations have become popular in UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) as payload carrying platforms. They are known for their simplicity and for their high maneuverability. They are used for military as well as for civilian purposes. Such multi-rotor UAVs are sometimes also referred to as tri-copter, quadcopter, hexa-copter and octocopter, quads and drones. From now on we refer to these UAV's as Rotary Wing Drones.
The most difficult part of flying rotary wing drones is controlling them remotely. This difficulty arises from decrease of the situational awareness of the operator, which in turn, significantly decreases working efficiency and at the same time increases risks. Low working efficiency results in high operating costs, and risks present even higher costs associated with collision inflicted hardware damages and human injuries.
The situational awareness of the operator is dependent on two main factors: the quality of input from his senses and his attention/concentration levels. Decreasing any of the two dramatically reduces the situational awareness of the operator and hence his ability to control the rotary wing drone and to accomplish the mission's purpose.
Remote controlled rotary wing drones are mainly used to photograph and document various subjects in civilian and in military applications, such as reconnaissance missions, social events, sport events, scenery, movie scenes, maintenance of buildings, bridges, and pipelines, and also accidents, fires and home security scenes. These missions are performed by an operator/pilot which has to fly and control the rotary wing drone remotely by looking up to the sky to watch it and at the same time keep the documenting camera pointed and focused on the documented subject by watching its output on a small screen to which the film is transmitted. Attempting to simultaneously perform those two distinct operations, which are taking place in different reference systems with different rate of change, severely harm the operator's attention/concentration levels.
Moreover, remotely flying a rotary wing drone, where the operator is not onboard, intrinsically deprives the operator of sensations of speed, acceleration, noise, distance, three-dimensional image of space, directions (right/left), direction of propagation (forward/backward, to/from) and inclination (pitch/roll). Additionally, the distance between the operator and the rotary wing drone, optically converge all objects in the distance such that the operator can't distinguish the rotary wing drone from objects surrounding it. All these dramatically degrade the situational awareness of the operator and thus his ability to perform the mission efficiently and safely.
In fixed wing UAVs there is an intrinsic continuous flight path due to the aeronautical characteristics of the fixed wing UAV. This helps the operator create and maintain a better idea of the direction of movement of the UAV based on this path that is registered in his mind and thus allows him to predict the location and direction of movement to come. In contrary, because rotary wing drone can change the direction of its flight and its speed abruptly, the ability to predict the location and direction of propagation of the rotary wing drone is severely tampered, and hence also the operator's situational awareness.
Hence a solution to the problem of the degradation of situational awareness of operators of rotary wing drones is needed.